


Drabbles of Interest

by Dien



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, Multi, short fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:40:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 4,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have written a lot of drabbles in the POI universe. This is my attempt to collate them all into one... thingjig. I am not lumping these in with the 'Three Sentences of Interest' because all of these are true drabbles as opposed to the 'lol who gives a shit' length variations on my so-called 'three sentence' fics. </p><p>Giving the Drabbles, as a whole, a Mature rating although most of them are probably just gen, a few are shippy, and very very few are explicit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tied (Harold/John)

Italian silk, copper-colored, seven-fold. Smooth/raspy-- catching on his stubble. John holds himself motionless. He feels his pulse hammering against the silk.  
  
Finch's nails scratch the nape of his neck. Deft fingers pull the tie tighter. Silk digs into John's trachea.  
  
“How far will you let me take this?” Finch asks, his voice even, conversational, curious.  
  
John doesn't speak. His voice would whistle. He answers by leaning his head back, staring up at Finch. Baring his throat further.  
  
Finch's lips quirk. “So stubborn, Mr. Reese,” he whispers. He covers John's mouth with his own, and twists the necktie tighter.


	2. Haze (Harold and Root)

The arm he looks down at is dotted with needle marks; surreal, out of place. A stranger's arm. Stranger's body. Unshaven, undressed, unwashed. He feels no connection to it.  
  
Normally he's all too aware of his body-- the locked rigidity of his neck, the aches in his leg, the occasional tremors of his right hand. His body never lets him forget-- it demands acknowledgment, accommodation, placation of its needs.  
  
Right now he floats. The sodium pentathol relaxes his muscles and detaches his brain.   
  
Root smiles at him through the chemical haze. _How are you feeling, Harold?_  
  
Adrift, fuzzy, chatty...  
  
Unplugged.


	3. Regret (Harold & Alicia)

He thinks about Corwin, because he has to think about something other than his current situation.  
  
Another person dead. Because he built something to save lives.  
  
He'd known her well, for someone he only met five minutes before her death. Back when she'd been their NSA liaison, he'd cracked files until he had a hundred private details. None as relevant as the fact that Nathan liked her.  
  
 _She's tough, Harry,_ he'd said.  
  
Yes. Tough enough, and smart enough, to find him despite her fear.  
  
What could she have been, if not for Root? An ally? Maybe.  
  
Another might-have-been.  
  
Another regret.


	4. Lifeguard (Harold & John)

His captivity is an ocean of darkness, choppy with noises, lights, rough hands. Root's paid muscle moves him from car trunks to locked rooms. Hard landings.

This time it's Reese. He thinks.

But it's been Reese before too, Root using recordings of John's voice and someone with John's build; using Harold's nearsightedness and drugged gullibility. He won't fall for it twice.

Not until John has him somewhere else, with arms wrapped around him hard enough to hurt. Not until he can smell him (gunpowder, sweat, that blend particularly _Reese_ ), and then he knows, he's back on dry land.

He's rescued.


	5. Cabana (Harold and Nathan)

Their company goes public and they make a million dollars in a week. It's a lot in 1982, enough to make them both a little giddy. Nathan calls for a party, and neglects to say it'll be in Antigua.  
  
Flying first class. A car with driver waiting for them at the small island airport. A beach too white and water too blue to be real; a beach cabana bigger than his apartment.  
  
He's been around Nathan's money, peripherally, for years now. This is different. This is partly _his._  
  
Harold tries his first mai tai and decides he likes being rich.


	6. Field Trip (Harold & Will)

He goes on more field trips than Nathan does.  
  
It's not that Nathan doesn't love his son. But there's always stockholder meetings, always power lunches, always _something_ requiring the presence of Nathan Ingram, the daylight face of IFT.  
  
Harold works at night. His days are free, and he can never say no to Will's eager _please come, uncle Harold._  
  
Zoos, planetariums, New York's museums. A berry farm, out of the city. Bits and pieces of Will's childhood, for which he poses as surrogate father.   
  
He and Nathan wear masks for each other. Harold gets the better part of the deal.


	7. Turtle (Harold & Will)

Blond hair and worried eyes intrude into his locked field of vision, break the monotony of a hospital ceiling.  
  
"Uncle Harold," Will says, voice cracking.  
  
He closes his eyes. He doesn't want to see. Doesn't want to hear.   
  
Nathan's dead. It's Harold's fault. Will has no father, and it's _his fault_ , and Will should curse him, hit him, kill him like the crash failed to do, but Will instead says absurd things like _whatever you need, we'll pay for it_ and _I'm so sorry._  
  
He's a turtle on his back, helpless, and Will's words are sticks stabbing at his belly.


	8. Leap (Harold & John)

Their paths keep crossing.  
  
He doesn't believe in fate. Nathan used to say _things happen for a reason_ , a last vestige of his childhood faith (and Harold would answer, _no, man just perceives patterns in chaos, the Gambler's Fallacy_ \--)  
  
But Nathan's gone, and he's still here. The thinnest line of blind luck that he still breathes, and isn't paralyzed.  
  
If there's purpose, it has a bitter sense of humor.  
  
But 'fate' keeps tossing this man at him: the agent from Ordos... ex-lover of a dead Number. Officially dead himself.  
  
He does the unprecedented: he takes a leap of faith.

 

***

  
  
John remembers a night drop with the Rangers. The bone-shaking rumble of the C-130 Hercules plane, flying dark. The screech of the door opening, and then his turn. Jumping blind from eight thousand feet up.  
  
No target to be seen. Only the trust that it'd be there, for him and his brothers-in-arms, visible once they got lower.  
  
He'd jumped.  
  
There is no plane now. A quiet restaurant, a strong-jawed man in a suit.  
  
He feels the same yawning gulf. The abyss before his feet.  
  
"America needs men like you in the Agency, John," says the man.  
  
He trusts.  
  
He jumps.


	9. Resurrection (Harold & John)

Reese is everything that he'd hoped for, and more-- and less, sometimes.  
  
He'd imagined he'd give the ex-spy the numbers, and check on his progress occasionally: that Reese would always do as he was told, and that his own involvement would be limited. At arm's length-- insulated from the numbers by his computers and by his employee.  
  
In his mind, it was never this real.   
  
Instead it's... intense, and sometimes violent. Heartbreaking, and terrifying, and challenging, and frustrating...  
  
He wouldn't trade it for anything. He's never felt so alive.  
  
Two dead men, resurrecting each other; one life at a time.


	10. Fireworks (Harold & John)

The night smells of sulfur and smoke. Color blossoms in pyrotechnic, patriotic glory over the Hudson. Finch keeps his eyes on the display, even when Reese settles on the bench by him.  
  
"New number?"  
  
"No, actually. I think it's too hot for anyone to plot murder."  
  
Reese grunts his skepticism of that. "Heat waves correlate with violent crime, Finch."  
  
"Yes-- but crimes of passion. Tempers to the breaking point, and such. Not premeditated."  
  
Reese is silent. Catherine wheels explode overhead. 'Star-Spangled Banner' plays, somewhere, distantly.  
  
"...so why'd you want to meet?"  
  
"I thought we might enjoy the show, Mr. Reese."


	11. Swimsuit (Harold/Nathan, Will)

Trumping more serious emotions (nostalgia, heartbreak, wariness), there was something incredibly awkward about being in Nathan's home with the son who had never known the true relationship between his father and 'uncle Harold'.

Will leaned against the kitchen island, and Harold had to Not Think about what he and Nathan had once done there; Will flopped onto the leather couch and Harold looked anywhere but.

Will tested the pool's temperature with his fingers, and said words Harold completely failed to hear: it was a distracting memory, the first time he'd learned that Nathan had no great fondness for wearing swimsuits.


	12. Grill (Harold & John)

Finch was stubborn; so was Reese. Their partnership carried frictions. Arguments. Days when their standards clashed, with neither man willing to give ground on key issues.  
  
"Absolutely _not_ , Mr. Reese. We have had Mexican three days this week already."  
  
"But Robertito's has the best tacos in the city! _Authenticity_ , Finch-- that's worth making some compromises for."  
  
"Robertito's has a 'D' inspection rating. Salmonella is not a 'compromise'."  
  
"Robertito's has carnitas grilled with yellow onions, red peppers, cilantro..."  
  
"Cockroaches, don't forget those."  
  
"Jesus, it was just ONE TIME, Finch. I've eaten worse!"  
  
"Strangely, that doesn't reassure me. No. We're getting Thai."


	13. Shell (Harold/John)

It goes like this: one item at a time, necktie first, slid from Finch's pressed collar by his own (so slightly shaking) fingers.  
Jacket next. Reese doesn't help, doesn't reach. Finch would recoil. Expensive fabric is haltingly slipped from damaged shoulders. Finch hangs it up.  
  
Waistcoat. Each button a minor eternity.   
  
Belt. Reese stares at Finch's fingers.  
  
Shoes. Socks. Finch's bare feet very white against the carpet.  
  
Immaculate shirt. Wool trousers. Thin undershirt. Cotton shorts.   
  
Finch removes his armor as laboriously as any medieval knight. Reese dares not breathe, lest any sudden movement send Finch back into his tailored shell.


	14. Bitter (John)

It occurs to him one day that he's stopped liking people.  
  
They're in Europe. Neither country nor city matter; they all blur. Stanton's in the building behind him; his job is sit with a cappuccino, and watch, and make sure nobody else enters.  
  
People walk by, and he catalogs them dispassionately. Seeing them as she's trained him to: threats, obstacles. He could kill everyone at the table nearest him before any of them could stand.   
  
It's dusk. A young couple passes, hand in hand. He looks at their twined fingers and tries to feel something.  
  
The coffee is so bitter.


	15. Wave (Harold & Theresa)

"Harold?"  
  
He freezes, then forces himself to smile and look up from his screen. Ex-co-worker, maybe. As soon as he sees who it is, he'll know who to be.   
  
But it's not an acquaintance from IFT. "...Theresa?"  
  
She grins, wry, and sits in the other chair at his tiny cafe table. "Never thought I'd see _you_ again. How's John?"  
  
"He's... fine. How's college?"  
  
"Fine."  
  
They talk. Surreal, to reconnect with a Number. What does he _say?_ To someone who knows.  
  
In the end it doesn't matter. Only the smile she flashes, the wave goodbye as she returns to her life.


	16. Death by Water (Harold Finch, five linked drabbles)

**(tide)**

Pain comes in waves; and high tide leaves him gasping, drowning, senseless.  
  
But low tide is almost worse, because he can think then.  
  
Stranded. A solitary starfish on an exposed beach, helpless to the first predator to come along.  
  
They say he'll get better. He'll be able to walk again. Probably. That he won't always need the neck brace, that once his vertebrae fuse it can come off and he can do things again.  
  
Right.  
  
Walk where? Do what? There's nothing, now. _Nothing._  
  
He doesn't count days. Just high-tide and low-tide, and how long until the next dose of morphine.

 

**(oracle)**

Pain comes in waves, but now he rides them like driftwood determined to reach the shore. He asks for painkillers only when he must, grimly desperate to resist the addict's haze that had colored his first months post-surgery.  
  
He seeks distractions. Anything to avoid temptation: crosswords, math puzzles, the news on TV.  
  
Nathan Ingram is still mentioned, his death at a disgruntled employee's hands. The knowledge of what really happened rankles like brine. Cassandra of Troy must have felt like this.  
  
Which is worse? To be an oracle never believed? Or to be an oracle who closed his own eyes?

 

**(atonement)**

Pain comes in waves, and in sundry flavors. The physical: the dull aches that never leave, and sharp stabs of lightning like a jellyfish's sting when he forgets, and moves as if he weren't crippled.

These are to be preferred to the emotional.

A lifetime of being an island unto himself (or trying), and now he swims in a sea of other people's sorrows. How could he have been so blind?

Each newspaper article, each gravestone he forces himself to visit... Nathan, over and over. _Everyone is relevant to someone._

He donates-- lavishly, anonymously-- to their families.

It isn't enough.

 

**(paddle)**

Pain comes in waves, but so does victory. The Pope brothers die, but Theresa is saved; Elias walks free, but Gates and son are safe.

The good and the bad. Moments of pain and triumph.

John gets shot. John gets shot, and a tidal wave of pain threatens to cripple him, to shove him underwater once more and hold him there. He _cannot_ do this without Reese.

Can't shoot and kill, can't swim with the CIA sharks, but if all he can do is doggie paddle to Reese's side then that's what he'll do.

The wave passes. They're both alive.

 

**(blanket)**

Pain comes in waves. He thinks that this is deeply philosophical. Profound even. The couch is swimming and there's a headache threatening, but right now nothing hurts, but he knows it's going to, because that's pretty Buddhist, everything cyclic, and he's a rationalist but Buddhist cosmology allows for multiversal theory _and_ the rudiments of string theory, did you know that Nathan?

Not Nathan. Someone else, familiar, dark where Nathan was golden, soft-voiced where Nathan was a glib talker.

_You've got to stop kicking the blanket off, Harold. Are you drinking your water?_

"Drinking it in waves and waves," he whispers.


	17. portrait of the hacker as a young man (a bunch of young harold)

**(swim)**

When he was nine, his brothers threw him into deep water to teach him to swim.  
  
It could've become a phobia, if he'd let it. The scent of chlorine-- the feel of water closing over his head-- could have become panic triggers.  
  
He'd been scared of many things. He'd refused to add to the tally.  
  
He took to water with the same flat doggedness he approached P.E. He learned to jump, dive, swim laps. In summers, he was at the pool if not the library.  
  
His brothers said _See?_  
  
It was in spite of them ( _to_ spite them). Not because.

  
  
**(dive)**

When he is nine, a boxing match happens on TV, gluing his family to the set. His father screams that Liston took a dive.  
  
He doesn't know (or care) about boxing, but he absorbs the words omnivorously, free of context.  
  
 _Liston took a dive_ : he ponders this phrasing, tries to square the words with the grainy TV image. (Peregrine falcons dive for prey at speeds up to 180 miles-per-hour.)  
  
Later, he learns what the words mean. Later, he takes a dive of his own, feigns defeat and slumps to nothing, that he might crawl from the ring of life unobserved.

 

**(dandelion)**

Her husband and her youngest have a fight, after he runs away and the police bring him home. She knows then it's only a matter of time. He'll leave again.  
  
Her strange, smart son. Smart enough to manage, she prays.  
  
As a girl, she'd picked dandelions and made wishes on them, blown her dreams in all directions. Now she makes sandwiches. In the dark, so not to wake her husband.  
  
She spreads mustard on roast beef. His favorite. Wrapped in wax-paper so they'll keep.  
  
All she can do is blow him on his way. He was never meant to stay.

 

**(bird)**

The bus station's floor is wet with tracked-in rainwater. He curls on a bench, jacket around himself, a fifteen year-old runaway with taped glasses.  
  
There's a bird stuck in the building. Flying too high for the exasperated staff to shoo out. He's loved birds since childhood, and knows it's a wren.  
  
Small and drab, but king of the birds in Aristotle's story. The wren hid in the eagle's feathers, and thus flew higher than all the others...  
  
He watches trapped wings flutter in a high corner. The world is full of hunting birds. He must be clever like the wren.


	18. Candle & Raft (Harold & John)

**(candle)**

In his room of machines and useless knowledge Finch stares at Carter's face.   
  
_I know where he's going to be._  
  
He's been a pacifist all his life, but suddenly understands how you could want to hurt another person. That she's only doing her job means nothing to him right now.  
  
No. No time. Not for shock or anger. Move. Reese's life depends on it.  
  
He's thought of Reese as a wildfire. A powerful tool, but dangerous, unpredictable: to be managed carefully.   
  
Now he perceives only a candle-- bright against the darkness, but solitary. Flickering.   
  
And betrayal is a strong wind.

 

**(raft)**

"No. You stay away. Don't even... risk it."  
  
Each word spills from his lips like the blood spills from his belly and leg. Two years since Stanton shot him. Two years he's been waiting for the bullets to finish the job.   
  
It was always going to end this way.  
  
There's silence in his ear, and he's relieved. Harold's listening. He'll stay away. Nobody will come for him, and it'll finally be over.   
  
And then he hears an engine speeding up.   
  
Stubborn Harold.   
  
Alright, then. Reese will swim for the raft, and try to understand a world where someone rescues him.


	19. Ship (Harold & Nathan)

The sun is bright. The water's clear. Harold leans against the deck rail and stares down into aquamarine depths.  
  
"All your better deeds – Shall be in water writ..."  
  
"Keats?"  
  
He blinks, and glances over. Nathan smiles back-- white smile, tanned skin, blond hair ruffled by the wind. Balance easy against the waves. Perfectly in his element.  
  
"Sorry. Didn't realize I was speaking aloud... Associated with Keats, but not originally his."  
  
Nathan joins him at the rail. "You said it didn't bother you that nobody will ever know what you built."  
  
"It doesn't."  
  
Nathan smirks-- sly, skeptical. "Well. _I'll_ know."


	20. Slide (Lionel Fusco)

Fusco had figured out that the moral choices in life were like a playground slide. Steep ladder to go _up;_ that was _effort_. Down, man, that was easy... you just let gravity do the work.   
  
That's how he'd gotten downhill. Gone along with Stills, closed his eyes, and taken the path of least resistance. Shut up the niggling voices with lots of beer.  
  
No Stills now. He's got a fresh start, thanks to the scariest bastard he's ever known. The angel of death wears a suit, and reminds Fusco he's got a ladder to climb every day of the week.


	21. Stink (Joss Carter)

Joss hadn't joined the Army because of some profound love of country.

She'd joined because it paid for college, and college was the only way you could get away from the bullshit that held you down at every turn, tried to shove you into tired statistical patterns.

Turned out to be bullshit in the Army too. Some for her skin, some for her gender.

By the time she found the same old bullshit in the NYPD she was _done_ playing nice to 'get along'.

Reputation came quick. _Carter's a bitch. Carter'll raise a stink. Watch what you say._

Damn right.


	22. Sun (Kara Stanton)

_It's another sunny day in Country Redacted_ , Stanton thinks, and imagines it as lyrics to a song. Sounds like an Eagles song, maybe, like Americana rock'n'roll of the stripe her father liked.  
  
They're a long way away from eagles. Only hawks and desert vultures, here, and Al Jazeera on the radio.  
  
Reese is taking a turn with their prisoner, inside the sweltering metal shack behind her. She stands in the sun for the hint of dusty breeze. Drains her water bottle.   
  
High in the white-hot sky two black specks are circling. Hawks or vultures, which are they?  
  
Which is she?


	23. Violence (Mark Snow)

There's days he thinks he's the only son-of-a-bitch in the entire Agency who takes pride in his work.  
  
Who'd said it? Orwell? 'People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.'  
  
Evans... the others, whose names he doesn't bother learning... no appreciation for fucking _history._  
  
He misses Reese and Stanton, like a man misses a good hunting dog. It's a damn shame, but orders were orders and Snow's never let fondness get in the way of the work.  
  
Learning Reese-- his best rough man-- is alive... stings his pride.


	24. Rusting (Harold)

Amazing, what you took for granted until you didn't have it anymore.   
  
Your best friend. Your moral high ground. Your ability to move faster than a hobble.  
  
Harold sits on a Central Park bench, crutches propped against it, and watches the joggers.  
  
He'd never been an _athlete_ , never given his running much thought. It was just something he'd done to relax-- something for his body to do, while his mind solved programming problems.  
  
Simple functionality. Assumed as the baseline for any system-- until it crashed...  
  
His body's obsolete. Just so many busted parts, with nothing left to do but rust.


	25. Shades (Harold, Nathan, John)

Reese thinks in black-and-white. Finch has always inhabited a world of grayscale, of moral relativism.  
  
He and Nathan had met in a philosophy course. Started out arguing, and never really stopped... Intellectual debates-- the predictable (pretentious) sophomore basics; _Does God exist?_  
  
Politics when religion bored them. War. Business. Ethics. _Is theft of bread by a starving man justifiable?_  
  
Harold had played Devil's advocate to Nathan's oft-impulsive, oft-earnest ideals. The brain to his friend's heart.   
  
Reese makes Nathan look nuanced and subtle.   
  
But they operate in a gray, gray world. Created by the only argument Finch ever wishes he hadn't won.


	26. Baggage (Alicia Corwin)

It's amazing how much less she has to pack, with everything traitorous excised from her life.  
  
Travel used to be a multi-bag hassle-- briefcase and laptop, phone, music player, a rat's nest of chargers, a USB hub, and and and--  
  
Her laptop's at the bottom of a lake. Her phone too. Everything.  
  
In what she can acknowledge now was probably paranoia, a lot of her clothes are too. (RFIDs. Sewn into the lining. They _might_ , they might have done that!)  
  
Alicia Corwin drives for Green Bank in a car that isn't hers with only one suitcase for a new life.


	27. Before (Harold)

In a house that legally doesn't exist, a man who doesn't either listens to the voices of an EMT crew.  
  
The room contains medical equipment: a hospital bed, a lift. His wheelchair's lines find counterpoint in the lines of the expensive computer before him.  
  
 _No pulse... DOA, copy that..._  
  
He stabs the space-bar to kill the sound. Sits there a long time, unmoving, processing another failure.   
  
Then he hits the monitor, one-handed, weakly. He does it again and again until it falls off the desk in a tangle of cords. He throws the mouse, the keyboard.  
  
He screams. Nobody hears.


	28. Octopus (John, Harold)

The CIA hadn't encouraged its agents to grasp the big picture. Right hand operated in ignorance of the left, that was protocol.  
  
Despite that, Reese had gotten a sense of the shape of it. Missions added up, slowly.   
  
He'd felt the Agency's many arms curling through every third-world country, understood himself to be one of a thousand suckers on the Agency's tentacles, tempting desperate prey with American promises.   
  
This 'Finch' guy... he's no octopus. He's a spider, but his webs are invisible, gossamer strands of electricity and information Reese can't see, let alone follow.  
  
Reese hopes this is an improvement.


	29. Staycation (Harold/Nathan)

"Y'know, it's not exactly a _vacation_ if we don't leave New York, Harold."  
  
"Nonsense," Harold murmured, leading him into the bedroom. Nathan followed. Harry was an irritating puzzlebox, but he was _his_ puzzlebox; he was intrigued every time Harold revealed another layer, another home, another identity.  
  
"Your phone is off, your secretary thinks you're in Greece... nobody can reach you," Harold added. He didn't add _including Olivia_. He didn't have to.  
  
Nathan grunted. "Still. Gonna get bored here."  
  
Harold's smile was wicked. He opened the nightstand to reveal an array of toys that stopped Nathan's breath.  
  
"Oh, I _doubt_ that."


	30. Charcoal (Harold/John)

The fire had left them both covered in soot. Finch drove to his nearest safehouse.  
  
Reese stared into the bathroom mirror at his own eyes, still red from smoke; his throat felt raw. Finch's fingers touched, nervous, at the singed patches on his shirt and skin beneath.  
  
"Take it off-- I'll get the aloe--"  
  
They showered with the water lukewarm. Reese hadn't expected Finch to join him, but when he did, he closed his eyes, rested his reddened cheek against cold tile, and let Finch's careful, shaking fingers clean him.  
  
The water ran down the drain, gray with charcoal.


	31. Tan (Harold/Nathan)

Massachusetts is a place where you bundle up every inch of skin for the journey between dormitory and classroom. The campus is white with snow.  
  
In this winter, Nathan Ingram is a burst of summer: hair bleached lighter by a southern sun, skin bronzed to a tan by days spent on the Gulf of Mexico. Nathan is loud, Nathan throws snowballs, Nathan finds the cold and his own chapped fingers absurd and hilarious.   
  
Harold stares at Nathan's sun-kissed skin, comparing it to his own cave-salamander paleness. Nathan's company is like traveling to a foreign country, someplace where clothes are optional.


	32. Salt (Harold/John)

Reese's skin tastes of salt. Like sweat and blood and match-heads. The taste of him makes Finch think of places he's never been, of the white-crusted Dead Sea and of baking deserts and of salted yoghurt drinks foreign to American tastes. There's nothing sweet about it.  
  
It's fitting. When their mouths meet it's hungry and tinged with a need that has nothing to do with sex, everything to do with loneliness, with the wall between their lives and the normal world. It's bittersweet, it's salted with exhaustion for their never-ending task, with past failures, with strained trust and bullet scars.


	33. Plant (Harold & John)

At first Reese had suspected Finch was Agency. Even when it didn't make sense, the suspicion had persisted subconsciously: paranoia isn't rational. Paranoia can entertain logical explanations by daylight, and whisper conspiracy theories in the dark.   
  
He trails Finch, spies on him. Finch has onion layers of secrets; is the Agency one of them?  
  
Only when he gets shot and Finch comes for him does he put that fear to rest.  
  
Months later, standing in his new home, he thinks: Finch is not a plant-- but Finch has planted him, and that he now has roots is much, much worse.


	34. Downtime (Harold & John)

The loft itself is too huge, too much, too empty; the park has people so between numbers John Reese sits in the park.  
  
It's summer now. It's hot outside. His coat and suit jacket hang in the vast closet.  
  
The park has a duck-filled pond; a fountain where children shriek and laugh and play, ignorant of murder.  
  
Finch settles on the bench by him, still in a suit despite the heat.  
  
“New number?” Reese asks, without looking away from a brother and sister splashing each other.  
  
“No,” says Finch, “but I brought you some bread for the ducks.”


	35. Heatwave (Harold/John)

Finch refuses to use the library's air conditioning. Reese is no stranger to heat, and the library's stone walls keep things cooler than they might be, but he watches Finch-- Finch, untrained by Syrian deserts or Indian humidity-- sweat like a pig in his three-piece ovens.   
  
Finch's sole surrender is a desk fan. It rustles the papers on their glass board; it stirs Finch's hair. Reese watches Finch turn to catch every oscillation like a sailboat yearning for the breeze.  
  
He brings Finch iced green tea. He sinks into a seat, watches Finch's pale throat work to swallow it down.


	36. Driftwood (Harold & John)

_\--a twisted branch upon the beach  
Eaten smooth, and polished   
As if the world gave up   
The secret of its skeleton,   
Stiff and white._  
  
Lines from Eliot come to him as he studies the man on the bed and wonders, again, if he is doing the right thing.  
  
This man. This man smelling of gutters and drink and self-loathing. This man, with eyes so empty as he'd tried to explain-- is there anything _left_ , inside John Reese? Anything worth digging from the sand?  
  
There must be. The bones must still be there, scoured but intact.  
  
He starts the tape.


	37. Harold and Nathan and Will, in Four Seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Like most of my earlier POI fic, this stuff has technically been jossed)

_2008 - Spring_  
  
He leaned panting against the bench. Will looped back easily through the park and flashed his father's grin.  
  
“Can't keep up, old man?”  
  
“Told you... you should have... asked your father.”  
  
Will jogged in place, barely winded. “He said it's good for you to get outside.”  
  
Great. They were tag-teaming him. Harold groaned.  
  
“C'mon, Uncle Harold. We'll stop at the next lamppost, promise.”  
  
He had never been able to refuse them, either of them, the shining Apollos to his wilier Hermes. One leg started cramping as he followed Will.   
  
Maybe Hephaestus would be a better fit.  
  
  
 _2010 – Summer_  
  
“--and don't _tell_ me he reminds you too much of Ellen-- he's too much like _you_. And he's bored.”  
  
Nathan sighed. “How can he be bored in med school?”  
  
“You were bored at MIT.”  
  
A grunt. “Maybe you can talk to him.”  
  
“Oh for... Nathan, _I'm_ not his father. Just... schedule some time for him. Okay?”  
  
In his ear, Nathan laughed. “The apocalypse is nigh-- _you're_ advising _me_ on relationships.”  
  
Harold smiled. But then there was a faint click on the line, and then a bone-rattling boom.   
  
And then the line was dead.  
  
  
 _2010 – Fall_  
  
The dead don't cross the Styx. He'd paid the boatman's toll, even if the cost had been millions and not two pennies, and he hadn't planned to return to the light.  
  
Stay in the underworld, lit only by glowing screens. With a neck brace and ghosts for company.  
  
But for Will.   
  
Will was arrested. Something stupid. Gambling.   
  
He wheeled himself back into the light, drawn by obligation, guilt, memory.   
  
_Uncle Harold,_ the boy-become-man said at the station, eyes wide. _What happened?_  
  
Don't look back, he wanted to say. Don't slow your steps to mine. Just walk for the light, Will.   
  
  
_2012 – Winter_  
  
He wishes Will would stay and it's selfish, he knows it. A dangerous wish too, because Will is still bright and bored like his father, and Will is a link to the old him.  
  
Everything he's worked for could be undone by Will-- by a chance encounter, a stray comment.  
  
Fortunately for them both Will is not as much like his father as Finch once told Ingram he was. He has his mother to him too. A little flighty, a little reckless.   
  
Finch lets him leave the nest. It's safer. And he's already haunted enough by Nathan as it is.


End file.
